Friday 11th March 2011

This panel looks at mobile learning technologies and programs that get students outside, envisioning a classroom framed by the sky, earth, and everything in between. The No Child Left Inside Act (NCLIA) now in Congress seeks to enhance the environmental literacy of K-12 students “to foster understanding, analysis, and solutions to the major environmental challenges” facing the nation. There is a tremendous opportunity to engage young people in science that connects their local environment to global problems, and technology is crucial to effectuate its promise.

Five hundred million eyes looked on as Neil Armstrong stepped onto the Moon; under NCLIA, with eyes trained on the environment around them, learners could now help address a problem as complex as climate change. By implementing a citizen science-based model that leverages mobile technology, NCLIA could help form a scientifically literate citizenry while researchers explore questions previously unanswerable.

Richard Louv’s "No Child Left in the Woods" explores how going outside improves the well-being of young people, and fosters what E. O. Wilson has termed “biophilia.” Programs that combine appropriate technologies with outdoor experience can give learners a new point of entry to scientific understanding beyond textbooks, and introduce new modes of assessment beyond standardized tests.

Augmented Reality (AR) is on the verge of becoming a household name. Even though the concept and technology that make AR possible have been around for quite sometime, the tech-savvy community has been abuzz lately as mobile platforms such as iOS and Android have played a large role in bringing AR to the masses. But what is AR? In a nutshell, AR is a reality or environment that is augmented by layers of computer-generated information. Recent AR technologies have allowed for mobile devices to add layers of reality atop the world we see through our cell phone cameras.

Several applications such as Layar, AroundMe and others allow users to find and interact with information and other users by simply panning their cell phones around them.

What are some current examples of AR technologies, applications and potential uses around today? How does this technology affect education? What types of knowledge, community-building activities, contextual and informal learning experiences can be created with AR? How can we use AR to augment learning outcomes and creation of communities of practice? These are just some of the questions we will discuss on this panel.

Comics have a long history of use in education and promoting understanding in a wide range of topics from English to history to public health. This presentation covers multiple levels of the employment of comics in math education, beginning with simple classroom activities, moving into mathematics pedagogical research methodology, and delving into advanced cognitive research to explore the mechanisms of how comics reinforce instruction. As a teaching tool, comics are inherently well suited for patterns, geometric shapes, and visual representations of data. They can be a form of stealth teaching - engaging students to think creatively about mathematics, helping instill intrinsic motivation and improving long-term retention. Accurate assessment of math attitudes and learning environments is a key challenge in addressing discrepancies in knowledge and performance. Comicvoice, a research method using comics to collect individual perspectives and has demonstrated utility in exploring similar public health topics, has strong applicability to this problem. Navigating the symbolic language of math is a known barrier for many students. Current research into how the brain translates concepts and similarities suggests that comics provide a pathway for alleviating this barrier through the very nature of being “sequential art.” By traversing through each of these stages, a holistic picture of comics’ place in the development of advanced math pedagogical techniques becomes clear.

Saturday 12th March 2011

Most Americans are not aware of the impact that the future of Mexico will have on the future of the United States. We too often perceive it as only a beach destination, and a dangerous, scary one at that. Much the same can be said about the rest of Latin America. Understanding Mexico is the gateway to understanding the balance of the Western Hemisphere. Political and economic journalists are absorbed with China, India, Afghanistan, and Iraq. But over the next 50-100 years, the people and businesses of the United States will be as affected by what happens in Mexico and Latin America as they will be by events on the other side of the globe. Likely more affected. The immigration debates on cable news are symptomatic, failing to probe political, cultural, and demographic realities. Latin America’s 900+ million people may have a very exciting future. How that future unfolds is at least in part up to us “Norte” Americans. In order to achieve the most prosperous and peaceful possible shared future, we need a deeper understanding of the people, culture, and geography of Mexico and Latin America. In my fast-paced presentation, I will hit upon key Mexican and Latin data and trends which will likely shape the future of the United States, focusing on Mexico as a first step in understanding. I will allow 15 minutes for questions and answers.

This session will be presented in SPANISH. Esta sesión será presentada en ESPAÑOL – Crisis de Comunicación en Internet en Latinoamérica. SXSW Latin America programming hashtag: #sxswLatAm
The Internet is a great place for people to exchange opinions and complain about the things they don’t like. Enterprises, brands and famous people are continuously exposed to consumer anger. This can sometimes escalate into a crisis for corporate as well as personal brands.
In this session I’ll try to define and explain what an online communication crisis is and what isn’t. I’ll provide examples of crises, including the most extreme cases, what to do after a crisis and suggestions for proactive actions to protect brands, companies, personal reputations, and how to facilitate conversations with people and consumers in case a crisis arises. My presentation is focused on Latin American companies and audiences, and explain the cultural differences in crisis communications between the U.S. and Latin American countries.
- If you like our proposal and vote for it, please tell your friends on Twitter!
I just voted for Crisis Communications On The Internet in Latin America at http://PanelPicker.sxsw.com You can vote for #sxswLatAm programming too!
- Si te gusta nuestra propuesta y votarás por ella, ¡por favor dile a tus amigos en Twitter!
Ya voté por Crisis Communications On The Internet in Latin America en http://PanelPicker.sxsw.com ¡Tú puedes votar para programación de #sxswLatAm también!

One out of every four children born in the U.S. today is Hispanic. In Texas, Hispanics are the fastest growing portion of the population. In 2006, 35.7% of Texans were Hispanic, recent projections are even higher now.

So where are the Hispanics? Are Latinos online? Are they content producers? Are they technologists? Are they influencers? Or are they staying off line because of the digital divide?

Recent studies have shown us that the Hispanic community is growing exponentially in its online relevance and is in fact growing in not only consumption but development at rates faster and higher than those of its non-Hispanic US peers. We are online and we are a force to be reckoned with.

Our panel Latinas and Technology: Beauty, Brains and Blogging intends to explore five success stories of Latinas and their communities in this space. We will look at the numbers, the opportunities and five related case studies which show that Hispanics in the US are innovating online and thriving technologically as content producers, technologists and businesswomen, flexing their political and economic muscle online and offline.

The opportunities this presents for both the Hispanic community and those interested in engaging the growing Latino community are infinite. Come out and join us at Latinas and Technology: Beauty, Brains and Blogging and let's make sure our presence is known. Let's share what we've been able to do to date and where we are going!

Sunday 13th March 2011

A few times each year, the press buzzes about the latest scientific advance that will someday cure any one of the diseases we fear the most. Nearly every one of these will turn out to be nothing more than a news story and far from a pill that can help improve our health. We spend hundreds of millions of dollars every day on research, as we struggle to find the "magic bullet" that will rid the world of conditions such as cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. We almost never find the magic.

While the big, historic scientific advances may be what dominate the headlines, in the end, it's the small improvements and better utilization of the technology we have already have that will ultimately lengthen our lives and improve its quality. These technologies don't come from labs filled with test tubes or cell cultures, but rather from labs filled with computers and the programs that run them. In the future, it will be digital technologies that prevent, treat, and finally cure diseases and not the latest "blockbuster" drug that has yet to be discovered (and might never be).

Digital technologies can already help us understand which treatments are best for us, what diseases pose the greatest risk, and how diseases spread among us. They can improve our interactions with doctors and improve access to care for everyone.

Instead of waiting for the next miracle drug to be developed, you might find the miracle was there all along right inside the computer you use every day.

The Health 2.0 and Open Gov movements have helped unlock large repositories of data - from user-generated data in hundreds of online communities to mobile devices to federal quality indicators to medical record data within provider organizations. But much remains to be done to connect these disconnected islands of data to generate information that's meaningful and actionable by end users. And what happens when you link informed patient communities with their health data? As Clay Shirky says, it gets weird. And interesting.

A number of communities have cropped up to promote access to medical data and the integration of user-reported and behavioral data within the clinical decision stream including healthdatarights.org, #healthapps, #health2dev, #73cents, #getupandmove and #WhyPM. With the opening up of health datasets, platform APIs and increasingly sophisticated analytic engines to make user-generated health data clinically relevant, we can finally unleash the wider developer community to build robust and integrated tools to improve health and healthcare.

This session brings together some of the leading voices in the Health 2.0 movement to discuss and demo technologies that help access, mine, display and distribute control of health information across a wide variety of interfaces and devices. We will also hear how government is opening healthcare datasets for access by the developer community and how patients are increasingly becoming "n of 1" platforms.

There are endless tools that purport to make people healthier, from mobile phone apps to blood-pressure-tracking software. But what, truly, is the impact of these tools? Are they motivating healthier behaviors? Are they improving people’s health? And more important, are they being used by the people who need them most?

This panel centers on the challenges of driving robust outcomes from technology platforms and the recipe for achieving the greatest health impact. Our focus will be usability (how to design tools so they are used), activation (how to encourage adoption) and retention (overcoming systemic barriers to encourage continued use).

Technology is often seen as a problem-solver. But inciting new models for behavior is only easy if done right. This panel will push people to think in fresh ways about behavior change and highlight what else is needed to move the needle on creation and use of winning health technology.

There is a significant gap between intentions and outcomes related to pregnancy; young adults say overwhelmingly that while they don’t want to get pregnant right now, they also are not fully protecting themselves from pregnancy by the careful, consistent use of contraception.

This session is about a program designed to address that gap called Bedsider.

We’ll talk about why the gap exists and look at established theories of behavior change for ways to approach the problem.

We’ll denote a knowledge gap but offer that for most people, intentions are good. Sex is complicated, messy, emotional, and driven by desire. Yet most keep trying to attack the problem with logic. They speak like doctors, appeal to reason, and show pictures of smiling people who look like they’re about to buy a car.

This session will detail how to apply design thinking to the problem and re-frame birth control. For most, sex education usually comes at the wrong time, in the wrong context, in the wrong voice. How might a different tone and branding of birth control affect adherence? And how do you test for it in developing a program? We will address those questions in our session.

We’ll talk about how Bedsider has to fit in visually and verbally—it can’t look like the health department—and the role that language plays in attacking the excuses to not use birth control. In this session we’ll also address how to design for feedback in an area where “nothing” is the usual reward.